Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to W J Popham.
In the face of health educators' reluctance to evaluate their programs and the absence of suitable rewards or punishments to encourage such evaluations, a materials-based strategy to reduce the aversiveness of program evaluation is proposed.
Two conceptions of program evaluation, namely, evaluation-as-proof and evaluation-as-improvement, are considered. Evaluation for purposes of program improvement of health-related programs is recommended. Recent advances in assessment of program outcomes, particularly criterion-referenced measurement, are described. Recommendations are also offered regarding treatment definition, data-gathering designs, cost analysis, and the collaborative conduct of health-related evaluations.
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The California Department of Health Services conducted a $28,600,000 tobacco education media campaign in 1990 and 1991. An independent evaluation of the media campaign featured four waves of data-gathering, one prior to the campaign's beginning and three at intervals thereafter. In all, 29,264 students in grades 4-12 and 6,785 adult smokers provided data for the evaluation. Through telephone interviews for adults and written questionnaires for students, these participants supplied information so that each person could be classified as exposed or unexposed to the media campaign's advertisements. Five criterion variables were used in the evaluation: campaign awareness, tobacco use, smokers' intention to quit, nonsmokers' intention to start, and attitudes toward smoking. Based chiefly on the differences between the results of waves 1 and 4, we believe the media campaign had a number of positive effects on California students. For adult smokers, the results were mixed.
As part of an evaluation of the 1990-91 anti-tobacco media campaign carried out by the California Department of Health Services, a study was conducted among 417 regular smokers who had quit during the period of the media campaign. In brief telephone interviews, all respondents identified up to three events or experiences that had influenced them to quit. In response to uncued questions, 6.7 percent of those interviewed indicated that they had been influenced to quit by an advertisement they had seen or heard on radio, television, or billboards. In response to direct questions about the media campaign, 34.3 percent of the respondents indicated that the media campaign's advertisement had played a part in their decision to quit. Applying the 6.7 percentage to the number of Californians who quit smoking in 1990-91, it can be estimated that for 33,000 former smokers, the anti-tobacco media advertisements were an important stimulus in their quit decision. Multiplying the 34.3 percent by the number of former California smokers who quit in 1990-91, the estimate of former smokers for whom the media campaign's advertisements played at least some part in their decision to quit rises to 173,000 persons. While causal attributions from such investigations should be made with caution, the evidence suggests that the 1990-91 campaign did influence substantial number of smokers in California to quit.